Politics
By Anthony Isibor
PROF. Anya O. Anya has said that the voting pattern in forthcoming presidential and general elections may be influenced by people’s conscience and not financial inducements from politicians.
Anya, a former lecturer and Director General of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, NESG, told Realnews in an exclusive interview in Lagos that although politicians would spend the money, but the likelihood of people collecting that money and still voting according to their conscience is higher this time around.
According to him, there are more people who are tired of the system as it is and will want to make a positive statement, and that statement will be sufficient to make a difference.
Speaking on the general state of the nation, Anya noted that although Nigerians may accept monies from politicians, who are hoping to win by buying votes, they will only vote according to their conscience.
He maintained that though the power of money is still very much potent, it will not be the determinant of who will emerge the winner because there is a fundamental shift in the way politics is played in the country.
“I am not saying that it won’t make any impact. It may make some impact, but it may not be enough because the value system running Nigeria today has shifted.
“Well there is a lot that money can do. When you are voting at the end of the day, when you are before that ballot box, you are alone, there is nobody else. It has been known that people will take the money and still vote their conscience, and this is likely to happen this year. It may not be as wide spread as we think, but it will be sufficient to make the difference.
“Let me take you back to the primary elections that chose the candidates, one candidate was supposed to have paid 30,000 dollars for each delegate’s vote and many of them were influenced, but at the end, information filtering in suggest that some of those who took part in that regretted it. And what is more, some of them are now the people campaigning against those whose money they took.
“When you even think about it, 30,000 dollars at the exchange rate of that time was N21 million and how many of those delegates have seen N10 million before, and when you have that kind of senseless spending, it disturbs the people who received it. And if you don’t take time, that money may not have solved any problem, because they would have gone literally on wild spending they didn’t expect. More of it will happen.”
Prof. Anya also cautioned Nigerians to be weary of politicians who have lost all forms of morality and vote only candidates with clear cut track records and character.
According to him, Nigerians do not need anybody to tell them whether or not they should vote or not vote for the APC or PDP candidates.
Speaking about the APC presidential candidate, he said: “All the indications are that he is not healthy, and people are pushing him. Obviously those people don’t love Nigeria because we should be double sure about the health status of our leaders having seen what happened in Musa Yaraua’s time, even what has happened in Buhari’s time, but for the Grace of God.
“This is enough to warn people admissibly. It is only somebody, who is 100% fit, or as fit as God allows can dare to say he is solving the problems of Nigeria at this time.
“But, people are still shouting, and do you know why, because there is a source of money that seems not to be exhaustible that come from that source, and people are more interested in that than either the health or life of the candidate.
“They are more interested in that money than the interest of Nigeria. Because if you know somebody is not well, and you want to give him responsibilities, obviously, you are not serious. So that should take care of that.”
“When you come to the PDP, you ask yourself the question, how come a party that has been ruling this country for 16 years, and has produced the kind of people that it has produced, why is it in such chaos, because they turned their back on moral principles.
“Like I said earlier, when you start tempering with the constitution of a country or even an organization; it is a fundamental document, and if you do, then I don’t take you serious because the signal you are sending me is that if you can temper with your constitution and ignore it, then what ever you are telling me, you can ignore. It is fundamental. But not only did they temper with their constitution so that they can have things the way they want it, to have the candidate they want, not the candidate that is best.
“At the end of the day, they compounded it by making sure that they changed the rules. Even the rules they made.
‘Their constitution says it should be this way, but they were prepared to set up a committee to say do we or do we not, while that committee was yet sitting, they advertised the sale of forms. That was a deliberate action to undermine the process because ones that happened, people now rushed in, they no longer waited for the report. You have compromised the fundamental principle of your constitution, and you have now introduced confusion, and that is what, I call it perfidy, lack of faith, lack of trust.
“That is why a reasonably well run party like PDP is in the mess it is n today. Because, again, morality was abandoned and that is also the fundamental problem of Nigerian politics.
“If you look at all the talks going on, you can hardly see any Nigerian politician looking at the moral basis of the action they take, or even suggest that there are things that should not be done. In every society, there are things that cannot be done because there is a limit.
“To the Nigerian politician, what are the limits, which is why all kinds of people are in the National Assembly, including 419ners, drug pushers, and when you mention that in any honest society, when your name has been associated with the possibility, proven or not proven of drug dealing, that’s enough to take you out of contention, because there is a moral basis for it,” he said.
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Tags: APC Nigerian Economic Summit Group PDP Prof. Anya O. Anya
